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Post by Deleted on Jan 27, 2017 21:27:00 GMT -5
The movies trim a lot of the fat, but they also introduce a ton of stupid sideplots while ignoring crucial ones. It's really a wash in my opinion.
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Post by llj on Jan 29, 2017 14:25:29 GMT -5
LOTR was a unique case though in that it wasn't necessarily intended to be "novels" per se. So as a complete read it doesn't hang together like what a "traditional novel structure" should.
I also find Tolkien's prose to be a bit too dry, but that's obviously subjective.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 29, 2017 14:56:04 GMT -5
It's absolutely dry, and his love of verse has a bad habit of grinding everything to a halt whenever it appears. Still, Middle-earth is one of the few fictional settings that ever felt "real" to me, so it wasn't all bad.
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Post by toei on Jan 29, 2017 16:06:24 GMT -5
It's absolutely dry, and his love of verse has a bad habit of grinding everything to a halt whenever it appears. Still, Middle-earth is one of the few fictional settings that ever felt "real" to me, so it wasn't all bad. Speaking of fictional universe that feel real, I wonder what that Dark Tower movie will look like. I really hope it doesn't turn into some generic CGI-filled blockbuster shit. I watched parts of those Hobbit movies and I was shocked at how fake and jarring those wolves and orcs still looked.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 29, 2017 16:17:27 GMT -5
There's a LOT of cringe-inducing chaff that could be cut away from the Dark Tower series, so a movie could be a good thing. People love to bitch about Mary Sues these days, but Dark Tower has literal author self-insertion.
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Post by toei on Jan 29, 2017 16:51:54 GMT -5
There's a LOT of cringe-inducing chaff that could be cut away from the Dark Tower series, so a movie could be a good thing. People love to bitch about Mary Sues these days, but Dark Tower has literal author self-insertion. That didn't actually bother me, I was just disappointed that the meeting between King and his characters didn't amount to much. There were references to Dark Tower in so many of his books that it had clearly become the center of his imagination; he just made that literal. I've heard of writing classes that make it a rule that you should never write about a writer, which Stephen King does all the time. I like that about him, actually; he has his own opinions about writing and doesn't cower in the face of bullshit made-up rules about what a novel can and cannot be. Deus Ex Machinae, author insertion, all that shit.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 29, 2017 19:09:14 GMT -5
He also has a scene in "It" where children have to have sex with each other to find their way out of a maze. I wouldn't exactly call the man flawless.
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Post by GamerL on Jan 29, 2017 20:09:25 GMT -5
There's a LOT of cringe-inducing chaff that could be cut away from the Dark Tower series, so a movie could be a good thing. People love to bitch about Mary Sues these days, but Dark Tower has literal author self-insertion. I thought that element was pretty cool though and had a feeling it would happen give the dimension hopping nature of the series. He also has a scene in "It" where children have to have sex with each other to find their way out of a maze. I wouldn't exactly call the man flawless. Everyone always makes a big deal about that but keep in mind he was probably high as a kite when he wrote that sequence, everyone makes crazy decisions when under the influence.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 29, 2017 20:21:18 GMT -5
Everyone always makes a big deal about that but keep in mind he was probably high as a kite when he wrote that sequence, everyone makes crazy decisions when under the influence. It's a bunch of kids pulling a train on a teenage girl. I think that earns a little more than a handwave.
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Post by GamerL on Jan 29, 2017 21:03:38 GMT -5
Everyone always makes a big deal about that but keep in mind he was probably high as a kite when he wrote that sequence, everyone makes crazy decisions when under the influence. It's a bunch of kids pulling a train on a teenage girl. I think that earns a little more than a handwave. The novel has a lot of sexual undertones though like the fact that Beverly's father wanted to have sex with her. There's also the part where Beverly admires her "developing" body in the mirror. Yeah, it's creepy but that's kind of the point, Stephen King's work has always had psychosexual subtext (Carrie is all about puberty for example) and that's what makes it resonate on a deeper level than typical "a monster popped out and ate a dude" horror, in fact any horror worth it's salt that resonates with people does so because it taps in to something psychological, why do you think slasher movies are all about sex, for example?
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Post by Deleted on Jan 29, 2017 21:14:57 GMT -5
There's a key difference in the part you put in spoiler tags, though. That's meant to be unsettling and one of the sources of terror for one of the main characters. The group sex scene is meant to be the culmination of their initial victory over It. In King's own twisted way, I think it's actually supposed to be tender.
As far as slasher films go, they focus on sex for a couple of reasons. The first is that they're an easy way to titillate the audience. The second is because the writers often have extremely serious issues with women. It's not that its inherently a crucial aspect of the genre, but more that it's used a lot by hacks and whackos.
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Post by GamerL on Jan 29, 2017 21:31:25 GMT -5
There's a key difference in the part you put in spoiler tags, though. That's meant to be unsettling and one of the sources of terror for one of the main characters. The group sex scene is meant to be the culmination of their initial victory over It. In King's own twisted way, I think it's actually supposed to be tender. As far as slasher films go, they focus on sex for a couple of reasons. The first is that they're an easy way to titillate the audience. The second is because the writers often have extremely serious issues with women. It's not that its inherently a crucial aspect of the genre, but more that it's used a lot by hacks and whackos. I don't mean to defend the part too much, I think it's bad but it's not quite as out of place as people present given some of the other sexual themes in the book, I also don't think it means King is a pedophile or anything so much as he made the subtext too much text in that one moment, but as Rick James said "cocaine is a hell of a drug." And sure, most slashers have them for those reasons, but it does also tap into people's inherent fear of sex and loss of "innocence"
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Post by toei on Jan 29, 2017 21:37:22 GMT -5
It's a bunch of kids pulling a train on a teenage girl. I think that earns a little more than a handwave. The novel has a lot of sexual undertones though like the fact that Beverly's father wanted to have sex with her. There's also the part where Beverly admires her "developing" body in the mirror. Yeah, it's creepy but that's kind of the point, Stephen King's work has always had psychosexual subtext (Carrie is all about puberty for example) and that's what makes it resonate on a deeper level than typical "a monster popped out and ate a dude" horror, in fact any horror worth it's salt that resonates with people does so because it taps in to something psychological, why do you think slasher movies are all about sex, for example? Everybody observes their developing body when they undergo puberty. It's not creepy unless it's written in a way as to make it pornographic, it's just a perfectly normal thing everyone goes through. As for the issue Jason brought up, I've seen it referenced online recently, but I can't recall it at all myself, probably because I must have been 13 or 14 when I read It so it didn't bother me then. I don't know how I'd react to it now but it's admittedly hard to imagine a context in which it would be okay. I do remember a scene where an adult character is ashamed when he remembers participating in a circlejerk as a kid, which might as well be something he pulled from his own memories; ie the shameful shit you do when you're too young to know better.
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